Tom Caraker sets and checks his fyke nets for snapping turtles in small creeks of the upper Choptank River.Turklin'. “Not a whole lot do this,” says Tom Caraker, who traps for snapping turtles from Denton to Cambridge. He works marsh guts so shallow that he needs a specialized air cooled “mud” motor to reach traps deep into the marsh. He catches from 100 to 600 pounds of snapping turtles a day. It's among the highest value seafood in the Chesapeake Bay, one to more than dollars a pound live weight. Tougher state regulations now require turtles to be 11 inches minimum size. “ I don't mind throwing them back, that's my future,” Caraker says. He sells them for meat and to aquaculture farms for breeding. “The meat,” he says, “is delicious stewed or fried.”